well, actually, when I was 10 years old (or how ever old you had to be back then to get a paper route), I had a paper route, and my job when I got home was to spread out the stock quotes on the floor and read to my Dad the quote for Con Ed, which at the time traded on the AMEX. Finally he said to me, "Don't ever mention that stock again unless it's up over xxx price!" One day it was way way up, and I said, "Dad, it's up over that xxx price!" and he said, "I sold it long ago, don't ever mention that stock to me again." meanwhile, I followed corn. Something I could understand. 5000 bushel minimum. Wow! 1 penny is fifty bucks!
One day around the year 2000, I got a pamphlet in the mail from a guy pictured wearing a cowboy hat who was named Ken Roberts. The pages boasted how one could make money trading commodities using 1-2-3 patterns and narrow channel breakouts, etc. and showed some nice charts. Iâd never heard anything about trading or price charts before. I bought one of his âTWMPMMâ trading courses to try to understand his methods and soon realized that there wasnât nearly enough information being presented to understand how to become a successful trader. A bit later I went to a bookstore and found a thick book called âSchwager on Futures: Technical Analysisâ written by Jack Schwager and âHigh Probability Tradingâ by Marcel Link and was fascinated and have been hooked ever since.
Yep, that's exactly how I stopped my stock trading activities and switched to commodity trading, back in the early 90's (before I started trading the Forex in 1995). I remember him saying that sugar futures was at a 20 year low (or something like that) and I got hooked immediately. I mean the idea of making big money buying and selling sugar was totally foreign to me, at that time. Good old Ken Roberts, quite a character
at anyrate, I got a series 7, and there was no minimum for me, so I emptied out my whole bank account and deposited the whole $325 in my brokerage account. Bought an OEX call for 1 1/4, waited a whole grueling day, then sold it for 2 3/4. And voila, I was a professional trader.
Wow, you more than doubled your money your very first day of trading, the worst thing that could happen to a new trader (or say they say)
I was invited to a dinner at a trader's house. He still is the best trader I've ever met, as well as the best mentor one could wish for
My finance class in college had us do trading simulators. I did well on it so I decided to try trading with real money.
I just loved prices mysteriously moving up and down. I'd look at a chart and say if I had bought here and sold there I'd have made $x profit. It seemed that this is the best way to make a living and everyone else who had a day job were losers. Then started trading any stock that would flash in the cnbc bottom ticker pre-market. Did all the mistakes I can and then took it as a personal challenge to get this thing right.